GOP Congress Has Made 125 Anti-Environment Votes This Year So Far.

The average citizen enjoys living in places with clean water and blue skies. The average citizen values public health and safe drinking water. The average citizen hopes that its government will help protect him or her from air pollution, water contamination, and exposure to toxic materials. Ergo,

The average citizen would say WTF in all caps if he or she were ever to read in one sitting the total amount of damage our current Congress is hoping to inflict on the American environment. Now the average citizen can do exactly that. If he or she cares to. Some Democratic staffers have compiled a searchable database of all of the different anti-environment votes that members of Congress have registered since the beginning of the year. Spend a minute clicking around this database -- if you are not infuriated, then I must conclude that you care little about the environment.

The first thing you learn is: The sitting Congress has made 125 anti-environmental votes since January. Since bleeping January.

These votes can be considered to be extreme. These votes are not just against things that our media considers 'controversial' like the scientific reality of climate change, which 97% of scientists support. They are not about 'trivial' things like some endangered species in Kansas. These are things like voting to end mining regulations that protect people's homes from corporations' toxic dredge, that protect the water quality in rivers, that protect air pollution standards in cities.

As an average citizen, I would like my government to help protect me from these things.

Typically, when faced with knowledge like the fact that the GOP is in the midst of an expansive attempt to shut down environmental protections in order to dole out favors to its corporate benefactors, I type up a blog post with a tone intended to convey an emotive blend of dismay, befuddlement, and outrage, and hope in some way that it is infectious. This time, I have abstained from such an approach:

To the average citizen, the sheer number of unambiguously anti-environmental votes as presented in the database should be infuriating enough.